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Is your skin care free from heavy metals? Our chelation process.

10 Aug 2017

Chelation at Africology

Is your skin care free from heavy metals? The very thing that can poison your wellbeing.

What is the big deal about metals?

Our environments have steadily become toxic. While we are now aware enough that dentists have stopped using mercury fillings, there are still other ways our bodies can pick up metals that can do us harm.

While there are some metals that are essential to our health (like copper and iron), when a metal enters the body that cannot be used or excreted, it begins to build up.

There are some metals that are essential to our health (like copper and iron), while there are others that enter the body that cannot be used or excreted, and begin to build up. While most of us know the heavier metals, such as lead or mercury, there are also lighter metals such as beryllium and lithium, which also contribute to poor health.

Some metals are radioactive, which have radiological and chemical toxicity. Some metals become toxic when they oxidise, changing their structure enough to be harmful (such as chromium(III) which is an essential trace element, but chromium(VI) is a carcinogen).

How do metals affect the body?

Heavy metal poisoning is the accumulation of heavy metals, in toxic amounts, in the soft tissues of the body. Symptoms and physical findings associated with heavy metal poisoning vary according to the metal accumulated.

Toxic metals sometimes imitate the action of an essential element in the body, interfering with the metabolic processes and creating illness. For example, radium imitates calcium to the point of being incorporated into human bone.

Toxic metals can bioaccumulate in the body and in the food chain, thus easily consumed by humans and animals. The heavy metals most commonly associated with poisoning of humans are lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium. Heavy metal poisoning may occur as a result of industrial exposure, air or water pollution, foods, medicines, improperly coated food containers, or the ingestion of lead-based paints.

Defences Against Heavy Metal Poisoning

Chelating agents are used in cosmetic formulations to bind metals and to help them pass through the body.

Africology uses Sodium Phytate, which is a white, odour-free powder that is easily water soluble. It is used as a chelate agent to boost the antimicrobial activity of preservatives, improve the efficacy of antioxidants, and stabilize products against the effects of metal contamination.

We use it as metals can enter a cosmetic formulation from production equipment, as well as unavoidable impurities from ingredients (e.g. extracts, pigments) and from processing water.

Our chelation is used in combination with typical antioxidants (tocopherol, ascobyl palmitate) to ensure that metals do not oxidise in the body.

There are less biodegradable chelators like EDTA, which mobilise toxic metals from sediments in sewer systems or waterways. These metals can then re-enter the food chain and subsequently pose a risk for humans and our natural food sources. As a natural ingredient, our chelation agent is easily biodegradable. The environmental risk of mobilisation of heavy metals is therefore minimized.

Sodium Phytate is not sensitizing and does not contain genetically modified material, dioxin, phthalates, BSE-related material or CMR-material. Sodium Phytate is made from Phytic Acid, the main phosphate storage in plants.